But when she gets home, no one says anything. No one’s even noticed her absence. Or Tonka’s. They haven’t been missed.
SOMETIMES I wonder how my father feels about having three daughters. He complains about women drivers and dislikes female attorneys. My mother says he’s just mad at the world.
My sisters, my brother, and I all share a fierce, if silent, loyalty. But we begin to splinter away from one another. I move into the bedroom in the basement, where I paint the walls vivid purple and keep the door closed. Karma is never home; no one knows where she goes. Karin’s rarely around, and when she is, her bedroom door is closed, too. Kurt spends time at the homes of friends. We tiptoe around the house, hoping not to be called up to our mother’s bedroom during her afternoon siestas. She has a row of little orange bottles in her medicine cabinet, and she keeps a broom next to her bed to pound on the floor when she hears we’re home from school. “Kris!” she calls. “Who’s down there? Karma? Karin? Come up here!”
But she wants to keep the family together. “We have to do what we can to help your dad,” she says.
One Saturday afternoon she piles us all in the station wagon, just like old times, for a drive in the mountains. She slides in behind the wheel and starts the car and we wait. Dad doesn’t come out. Finally she goes into the house and gets him. His mouth is set in a hard line. We drive silently through the foothills to a pretty house surrounded by pine trees, the house of a psychiatrist. “This will be fun,” Mom says. “Lots of people do this sort of thing now.”
We all nod grimly.
A man in a sweater walks out to the driveway to meet us. “Welcome,” he says, and extends a hand to each of us. “This must be your wonderful family,” he says to my father. He doesn’t answer.
The man shows us to his living room. My parents each get an easy chair and the kids are instructed to sit cross-legged on the carpet. Alcoholism is a disease, we’re told. But it’s a disease of the family and not just the person.
My heart sinks. My siblings look glum. It looks like it’s our fault after all.
The psychiatrist takes out some construction paper and crayons and hands them around. “I’d like each of you to draw something for me,” he says. “Draw me a picture of your house. Of your family home.”
We clutch our papers close so no one can see what’s being drawn, except for Kurt, who never follows the rules. He lies on his stomach on the carpet and draws a square little house with a door and two windows. A puff of smoke comes from the chimney and a stone path curves up to the door. He draws a tree on each side of the house. “Good,” the psychiatrist says. “You did a nice job there.”
I can’t decide what kind of house to draw, so I draw a horse instead. Karin and Karma are reluctant to show their drawings. “How about you?” the man says, turning to our parents. My mother’s drawing is detailed and precise—she took art classes before her father talked her into going to nursing school. Her house looks like a bare-bones version of our house in Bridledale. “And you?” the man asks. My father turns up his paper for us to see.
The paper is solid black, colored in hard crayon from corner to corner.
The psychiatrist nods. When we get back to the car, Dad mutters something about a very expensive drawing lesson.
We don’t bother to stop for dinner on the drive home. “Well, that was a good first step,” my mother says cheerily as we file back into the house. We don’t go back.
IN LATE 1974, seven companies respond to the AEC’s request for bids from private contractors. On November 21, the AEC selects Rockwell, one of the nation’s largest industrial corporations, as the new contractor at Rocky Flats. It awards Rockwell the typical cost-plus contract that will provide the company immunity from most lawsuits should problems occur.
Rockwell is well-known to activists like Judy Danielson, Pam Solo, and other volunteers from the Denver office of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker-affiliated organization working for social justice and human rights. One of their projects is to curb production of the B-1 bomber, which is built by Rockwell.
And there are still many unanswered questions about the effects of the 1969 Mother’s Day fire. No one—not Dow, Rocky Flats, the Colorado Health Department, or the Jefferson County Health Department—can or will provide clear answers. With Maury Wolfson of Environmental Action of Colorado, activists form a coalition of citizens and grassroots groups called the Rocky Flats Action Group. The group begins a public information campaign with the slogan “Local Hazard, Global Threat,” and bumper stickers bearing the slogan begin to appear on cars. Meetings are set up with incoming Governor Dick Lamm and Congressman Tim Wirth. One of the people in attendance at these early meetings is my sister Karma.
Denver has changed from a cow town to a burgeoning city of oil and gas companies and successful sports franchises. Colorado is riding an early wave of environmental enthusiasm. Citizens are finally able to stop the Rulison Project, the blasting of underground nuclear bombs to stimulate production of natural gas. But no one’s sure what, if anything, to do about Rocky Flats.
Governor Lamm and Representative Wirth respond to citizen pressure by creating the Lamm-Wirth Task Force to study Rocky Flats and make recommendations for its future. In late 1974 the task force conducts a series of public hearings to seek answers to citizens’ questions about Rocky Flats. More than fifty people testify, including experts from around the country. Farmer Lloyd Mixon of Broomfield brings along Scooter, a piglet with deformed ears and hind legs. Mixon testifies that Scooter is only one of many animals with deformities born on his ranch southeast of Rocky Flats, beginning as early as 1965.
Rocky Flats officials contend that the plant makes a “vital and substantial contribution to freedom” by manufacturing plutonium triggers, and that the plant’s $70 million operating budget is necessary to the region’s economy. They dismiss claims of health problems and sinking property values. The Colorado Health Department, often caught in the middle between Rocky Flats and the public, attributes the problems with Mixon’s animals to unsanitary conditions and inadequate nutrition, an allegation Mixon vigorously denies.
When the Lamm-Wirth Task Force publishes its report after the hearing, it concludes that there are not only serious safety issues at Rocky Flats but also the potential for a catastrophic nuclear accident. The risk is too great for a weapons plant to be located near a large population center, and the report recommends that the nuclear work done at Rocky Flats be closed or relocated. In a press interview, task force member Patrick Kelly, a Rocky Flats worker and United Steelworkers of America official, states that Dow Chemical is “neither responsible nor responsive” to the public or to Rocky Flats workers, and that the secrecy at the company is supported by the AEC.
The report recommends the establishment of a permanent citizen monitoring committee. It also criticizes the Price-Anderson Act, passed in 1957, and renewed in 1967 and 1977, which indemnifies the nuclear industry against nuclear accidents and exempts corporations from penalties associated with their actions, even in the case of gross corporate negligence. (In 2003, the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act was extended until 2017.) Companies like Dow and Rockwell can pollute without penalty, and taxpayers bear the cost. “The Price-Anderson Act should be repealed and replaced with a nuclear industry liability act,” the task force states, “which requires contractors and licensees to bear the risk of doing business in the industry.”
Contradicting its own recommendation, however, the report also emphasizes that “strong consideration should be given to maintaining the economic integrity of the plant, its employees, and the surrounding communities.”
Some critics claim that the Lamm-Wirth Report is “a masterpiece of compromise.” It compromises the health of local citizens with the competing interests of a government that wants to make bombs, developers that want to sell houses, and workers who need jobs.
Dow Chemical has left Rocky Flats after two decades of accidents, plutonium releases, an
d safety problems, most of which are still hidden under the cloak of Cold War secrecy. Now that Rockwell has stepped in, it’s business as usual.
WHAT LITTLE popularity I enjoy in junior high disappears by the time we move into the new high school. I’m not a stoner or a jock or even a proper redneck. I play clarinet in pep band but I don’t hang out with the band geeks. I go to Rodeo Club meetings but I’d rather listen to Led Zeppelin than Tammy Wynette. I don’t smoke pot, I think beer tastes like soap, and I’m still painfully shy. I persuade the principal to let me take auto mechanics instead of home economics—who wants to be a housewife?—but the teacher won’t let me actually work on a car like the guys in the class.
Spirit Day arrives. Classes end early and all the students and teachers gather in the new gym for a special assembly, a pep rally in the gym just before our first basketball game of the season. I sit with the band in the bleachers, wearing my Pomona Panthers T-shirt, and we belt out a fumbled but deafening version of “Rock Around the Clock.” Our theme for Spirit Day is “Happy Days,” from the popular television show.
The assistant principal walks up to the microphone. “Panthers!” he cries. “Are you ready for a little spirit?” The crowd roars. We’re a big school. We stamp our feet on the bleachers until the whole gym rocks.
Suddenly there’s the sound of a motorcycle in the hall, revving its engine. The gym falls silent. How can this be? Motorcycles aren’t even allowed in the parking lot.
The doors swing open and the motorcycle roars in. The rider wears a white T-shirt, black leather jacket, and black boots. His dark hair is shiny and slicked back. Before he can take the bike full-speed around the gym floor, the assistant principal waves him down. “Boys and girls!” he yells into the mike. “I give you … The Fonz!”
The crowd erupts. Girls start screaming. I’m shocked. It’s Randy Sullivan on his big brother’s motorcycle.
Randy smiles and gives a big thumbs-up. All the girls love him, and he gets a full page in the yearbook. There’s no hope for me now.
THE SUMMER of my sixteenth year, my mother goes back to work, my grandfather starts to have heart trouble, and bill collectors call every night at suppertime. My father is adored by his clients. He gets them out of their divorces and lawsuits, accidents and DUIs—some of the neighborhood kids have begun to fall into the latter category—and they all love him for it. He wins a pro-bono award from the local bar association. “Your father is wonderful,” people say. “He’s so smart, and he’s fun to talk to.”
I think they’re nuts. Who are they talking about? He must be living a double life. Nothing has changed, and even our mother seems stumped. “I thought I knew him when we married,” she says. “But I often wonder what happened to him.” She sits on her stool in the kitchen and smokes one cigarette after another. She’s not convinced that all men aren’t like this anyway, to some degree or another. Unreliable, unknowable, impossible to trust. And they can’t even do their own laundry. But she likes men—she’s always been a big flirt—and she firmly believes in marriage. Everyone in the world should be married.
“Look what I have, despite everything,” she says. “A wonderful family and four beautiful children.” This has become a mantra: a-wonderful-family-and-four-beautiful-children.
My mother starts working a few days a week on the swing shift at the local nursing home. She hides the money from Dad so she can buy groceries. In our whispered bedroom conversations, she tells me that the money he earns seems to go into his sinking law practice or the cash drawer of Triangle Liquor. She never sees it. Our household grows a little leaner. We give Chappie to a local 4-H kid—he’s a little addled in the head anyway. There’s little money for hay and horse brushes and riding lessons, never mind clothes and books and tennis shoes.
When school ends I look for a summer job. I’m old enough to get a real one, but pickings are slim. I skim the classifieds and find nothing. Then I see that the truck stop a short drive from our house is hiring. I fill out an application for a waitress position. “Thank goodness you came in today, honey,” the woman behind the cash register purrs. “I had two girls quit just this morning.” Her copper-red hair is piled up in a beehive as stiff as a football helmet. It’s 1974. Even my mother has stopped wearing beehives.
I place my application on the counter. A long U-shaped bar stretches around the edges of the room, with truckers on bar stools hunched over their meatloaf and mashed potatoes. A few tables stand empty in the middle. A black-and-white TV roars in a corner and the room is filled with smoke. “When will I hear back?” I ask.
The woman rings up a gas purchase and hands the receipt to the man waiting. Several truckers stand impatiently behind him. It’s a busy place, and she looks at me as if she’s already forgotten me.
“Do you have any experience, darling?”
“No.” This is my first job, except for the long Saturday afternoons spent hanging out at my dad’s office.
She looks me up and down. “That’s all right. Just show up tomorrow morning at five thirty. We’ll give you one week on the early shift, six to two, and if that works out we’ll put you on the late shift. Girls make a little more money on the late shift.”
I watch as a waitress takes a pot of coffee up the line of truckers at the bar, filling each cup.
“Anything else, dear?” The words are not kind.
“What does it pay?” I blurt.
“A dollar twenty plus tips. And you’ll get a uniform. The uniform is free. You need to get yourself a pair of pantyhose, honey. Neutral color.” She shoos me away with her long fingernails. “Tomorrow morning. Five thirty. Girls get fired for being late.”
I don’t tell anyone at home about my job. It feels new and exciting and a little dangerous. The best thing, though, is the paycheck. A paycheck that’s all mine.
EVERYONE—THE governor, the mayors, Rockwell, and ERDA—seems to like the idea of a citizen watchdog group. Following the recommendation of the Lamm-Wirth Report, Governor Dick Lamm establishes the Rocky Flats Monitoring Committee, probably the world’s first and only group of citizens formally tasked with monitoring a nuclear weapons facility. Sister Pam Solo is the sole woman appointee. The group meets regularly at the Rocky Flats plant, where they’re treated like VIPs. They drive through the checkpoint and put on booties and respirators for formal tours of the plant. They shake hands with managers and watch films produced by the Energy Department.
They have no real authority.
Few women work at the plant except as secretaries, and Pam has a hard time finding a respirator that will fit her face. She’s also one of the few people who are skeptical of the intentions of Rockwell and ERDA. For one thing, being inside the plant makes her uncomfortable. She feels like she’s entering a world she’s feared and hated since she was a child, when she had to dive under her school desk for drills during the Cuban missile crisis. And she’s struck by the language the workers and managers use to distance themselves from the product they manufacture. A nuclear bomb explosion is called an “excursion”—as if, Pam thinks, one were going for a mountain hike on a nice summer day.
It begins to dawn on Pam that the ultimate recommendation of the Lamm-Wirth Report—the phasing out and closing of the plant—may never be addressed. She worries that things will continue as usual, with the committee merely gathering data and indecipherable information as a substitute for actually carrying out the real recommendations of the report.
But small groups of activists now appear regularly at the gates. Pat McCormick and fellow nuns from the Sisters of Loretto meet with a prayer group every Sunday morning just outside the plant. Housewife Ann White drives up from her home in Cherry Creek to march with people carrying signs and beating drums from Boulder to Rocky Flats, a twelve-mile hike along a busy highway.
I SHOW up for my first day at the truck stop and I’m handed a short-skirted uniform with a white bib, a pocket for a leaky blue pen, and an order pad. I feel like I’ve become a stereotype. “No runs in the p
antyhose,” another waitress warns. “They’ll send you home. You need to have a spare pair in your purse.”
Through the window I can see trucks moving in and out, filling up with gas, their drivers jumping down from the cabs to light cigarettes and stand and talk. The trucks carry beer and milk and gas and who knows what—I wonder if some of them come from Rocky Flats. Later I will learn that they do. The truck bay is brightly lit, but inside it’s dim and smoky all day long. Plastic globe lighting hangs from the ceiling, and the carpet is gray and stained. By 10:00 a.m., I’m exhausted. The cook yells and the busboy is slow and the truckers—a constant stream of them—smile as if they expect something that’s not on the menu. Speed is everything. Two girls work the counter and one girl—the new girl, me—gets the family dining area, a small room set off from the counter area where no one actually sits down to eat. You have to pay your dues and prove you’re willing to work hard for nothing before you get moved to the counter, where tips are thick. The coffee is scalded and the food all looks the same, some version of an open-faced beef sandwich and mashed potatoes coated with gravy and a slice of microwaved cherry pie for dessert.
If I’m going to be a truck-stop waitress, I’m going to be a good one. Before long I can carry four plates on each arm just like any other girl. The manager lets me work the counter. Tips are good. One waitress befriends me, a heavy woman in her forties named Shelley who lights a cigarette while still finishing off the last one. She’s raising two kids on her own. “Don’t stay here too long,” she laughs. “It grows on you.”
I count my tips each night and keep them in a shoebox under my bed. It’s rumored that some girls make extra money at night after their shifts end, climbing up and tapping on truckers’ windows. I begin to receive letters from places as far away as Nevada and Utah from a trucker not much older than I am who stops at the diner every other week or so. I barely know him and he writes three or four pages at a time. “Is this boy in love with you?” my mother beams.
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